Abstract

We describe three contributions for distributed resource allocation in scientific applications. First, we present an abstract model in which different resources are represented as tokens of different colors; processes acquire resources by acquiring these tokens. Second, we present distributed scheduling algorithms that allow multiple resource managers to determine custom policies to control allocation of the tokens representing their particular resources. These algorithms allow multiple resource managers, each with its own resource management policy, to collaborate in providing resources for the whole system. Third, we present an implementation of a distributed resource scheduling algorithm framework using our abstract model. This implementation uses Infospheres, which are Internet communication packages written in Java, and shows the benefits of distributing the task of resource allocation to multiple resource managers.

This work was supported in part under the Caltech Infospheres Project, by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research under grant AFOSR F49620-94-1-0244, by the CISE directorate of the NSF under Problem Solving Environments grant CCR-9527130, and by the NSF Center for Research on Parallel Computation under cooperative agreement CCR-9120008. We thank Doug Lea for his helpful comments.

K.M. Chandy and A. Rifkin. Systematic composition of objects in distributed internet applications: Processes and sessions. Proceedings of the Thirtieth Hawaii International Conf. on System Sciences, pages 395–404, January 1997.